The weekend features performances, theatre and film industry breakout sessions with distinguished Columbia College alumni panelists, receptions, building tours, and a keynote talk by Columbia College alum Anna D. Shapiro ’90, HDR ’15, artistic director of Steppenwolf Theatre. All events take place at the Getz Theater Center. To register, click here.

AJ Ware

Jim Jacobs

Mark Kelly

The reunion weekend opens on Friday, October 19, with a gala performance of the Columbia College Theatre Department‘s 2018-2019 Mainstage Season opener: The Penelopiad, by Margaret Atwood, author of The Handmaid’s Tale. With an all-student, all-female cast and an alumni-led creative/production team, The Penelopiad (which has additional performances through October 27) is Atwood’s retelling of Homer’s heroic epics The Iliad and The Odyssey from the point of view of the women, including Penelope, queen of Ithaca and wife of Odysseus. Directed by Columbia alum AJ Ware ’09, co-founder of Chicago’s award-winning Jackalope Theatre, this is the first production in the Courtyard Theater, the Getz Theater Center’s splendid new 181-seat mainstage performance venue. The performance is preceded by a reception starting at 5 PM, and joining us as special guests will be Jim Jacobs HDR ’14, coauthor of the hit musical Grease and benefactor of the Jim Jacobs Musical Theatre Scholarship at Columbia College, and Mark Kelly HDR ’17, Chicago’s Commissioner of Cultural Affairs and Special Events and former Vice President of Student Success at Columbia College. Both Kelly and Jacobs are recipients of Honorary Doctorates from Columbia College.

“I think that Columbia is the most anti-elitist, inclusive theater-practicing organization that I know in the country. Its ethos of inclusion and representation just comes from: Anybody who wants to do this can do this, and we’ll support the people who want to do it. . . . At its heart, [Columbia] helps young people who didn’t think there was a place for them to tell stories learn how to tell stories.”

Shapiro will speak to Theatre Reunion Weekend attendees on Saturday, October 20, at 10 AM, preceded by a breakfast reception at 9 AM.

Also on Saturday, the Columbia College Theatre Department will showcase the first performance by our MFA Program in European Devised Performance Practice, the department’s first graduate-level program, launched in 2017 in partnership with the London International School of Performing Arts (LISPA). Titled Oklahoma!: Winner Takes All, the performance is FREE.

Sheldon Patinkin (August 27, 1935-September 21, 2014)

The Getz Theater Center was acquired by Columbia College in 1980 as the home of the then-combined Columbia College Chicago Theatre/Music Department. The department was then chaired by theatre director and teacher Sheldon Patinkin, who recruited a faculty of professional artists from Chicago’s nationally lauded theatre scene, including members of Steppenwolf Theatre and The Second City. Patinkin served as chair from 1980 through 2009, then continued to teach at Columbia until his death in 2014. The Sheldon Patinkin Award, established in his honor, provides financial assistance to outstanding Theatre students in their journey to a professional career. To contribute to this award, click here.

“Island of Lost Coeds”

The first production in the building’s mainstage auditorium, then known as the 11th Street Theatre, after Columbia took over the building was Island of Lost Coeds, an original musical by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey, coauthors of the born-in-Chicago Broadway and Hollywood hit musical Grease. The show was directed by Sheldon Patinkin and June Pyskacek, who had produced the original version of Grease.

From 1980 through 1995, the Theatre and Music programs at Columbia College were combined in a single department, chaired by Sheldon Patinkin, with composer-in-residence William Russo serving as director of the Contemporary American Music Program. The Theatre and Music programs shared classroom space and faculty, and the Getz Theatre hosted productions by both the Theatre and Music programs until the two programs split into separate departments and the Columbia College Chicago Music Department relocated next door to the former Sherwood Conservatory of Music building. Today, the Theatre and Music departments still collaborate on an interdisciplinary Musical Theatre Program.

Getz Theater Center of Columbia College Chicago Courtyard Theater.

Getz Theater Center lobby.

In 2018, marking the 90th anniversary of its construction, the historic 72 E. 11th Street building was designated as the Getz Theater Center of Columbia College Chicago after undergoing a two-year renovation project led by the architectural firm Gensler. While the building’s Art Deco facade was diligently preserved, the proscenium-style main auditorium was transformed into the 181-seat Courtyard Theater. The center’s other three performance spaces are the Sheldon Patinkin Theater (formerly known as the New Studio); the Classic Theater, a black-box studio used primarily for student directing projects; and Studio 404, a flexible space well suited to immersive multimedia productions.

The Getz Theater Center brought all theatre facilities at Columbia College under one roof: it houses a costume shop, a lighting design lab, a makeup and prosthetics lab, costume and prop shops, a dance studio, a library/resource center, classrooms, offices, and a fully-equipped scene shop adjacent to the Courtyard.

Over more than 35 years, under the leadership of Sheldon Patinkin and his successors John Green and current interim chair Peter Carpenter, the Columbia College Theatre Department at the Getz Theater Center has reflected and helped shape the development of Chicago as an international theatre capital while training thousands of young creatives who have gone on to distinguished careers as performers, writers, composers, designers, directors, choreographers, musical directors, producers, administrators, entrepreneurs, critics, and teachers in theatre, film, TV, academia, and the media.

In conjunction with the Columbia College Theatre Reunion Weekend, the Columbia College Chicago Library is hosting a display of pictures, programs, and other materials related to the history of the Getz Theater Center of Columbia College Chicago. Titled “Setting the Stage: The Theatre Building at Columbia College Chicago,” it chronicles the history of the 72 East 11th St. building, from its construction in 1928-29 as the home to the Woman’s City Club of Chicago to its renovation in 2018. The exhibit is on the fifth floor (east side) of the library at 624 S. Michigan, Chicago. Free and open to the public, on display through October 21.

Below is a gallery of posters from Columbia College Theatre Department productions over the decades. To see more posters, click here. For more information on the history of theatre education at Columbia College Chicago, click here.